02Sep / 2024

Migbars, and old man whining about health

My recipe for “Migbars” (energy bars to snack on while climbing etc. that are healthier and cheaper than commercial ones) is nearly all sorted out. The climbers I know who have so far test-eaten them all gave positive feedback.

I remain happy with my Ford Tourneo Courier 1.0 Ecoboost although the cruise control is distracting. It is my first car with a cruise control, I like the cruise control, but it switches to “standby” if I step on the brakes or gas while using it, and I have not yet figured out how to just switch it back on, and instead must turn it off and back on instead.

I woke up today without vertigo for the first time in more than 2 weeks. I am hesitant to discuss my health, as I don’t want to be an old person cliche talking about my health all the time, but I always find trouble-shooting a PITA and it’s even more so when it is your health you are dealing with and man don’t ever do internet searches for health/illness stuff. There are so many potential causes of vertigo! Most dire! This led to me bouncing from one doctor to another, with the result that my body has passed inspection and I am street-legal for another year. It has been determined by MRI that my brain is “not clinically relevant” which sounds insulting but is good news; my ears are fine, except for the growing deafness and tinnitus, and so on.

I have been forced to monitor my blood pressure, which so far is right where it should be.

I still don’t know what the cause of my dizziness was – anyway I woke up this morning feeling fine for the first time in 2 weeks. I think it might have been a combination of the hot weather, stress, fear and panic. I was somewhat miserable and unable to go climbing, which is my main anti-misery tool lately. Anyway. Feeling better now, I think. Hope it sticks. Maybe I can go climbing again soon (as soon as I manage to convince Alpha that I my equilibrium has returned), and have a Migbar.

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31Jul / 2024

doo-dad

I weighed myself and then was immediately motivated to go to the gym where I seem to have spent too much time on the crotch machine as I am now walkin’ aroun’ like a bow-legged cowpoke.

I weighed myself because I was curious how much weight Gamma was belaying when she held the rope for me in our climbing class. Quite a bit, it turns out.

We hooked her up to a sandbag a couple times, and ran the rope in a z-pattern a couple times, to assist with my excess weight, as neither of us wanted her to be pulled upwards through a bunch of carabiners if I fell.

I was careful not to fall, but still. You do all that work to help them become awesome, you don’t want to pull them through a bunch of carabiners.

Yesterday I went to a climbing shop and bought a different doo-dad to increase friction on the rope in case of a fall, recommended to me by a climbing friend to help with the weight difference.

Meanwhile, working on decreasing the weight difference as well.

And limpin’ around

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05Jun / 2024

Climbing update

For the first time in the past 6 months I was neither injured nor sick so I went bouldering with Gamma for the first time in more than 2 months or more – life kind of segued from various joint injuries and deaths and funerals to viruses to the famous eye lens replacement – and we were careful, especially of me, and I stuck to easy routes, and did not fall, and climbed back down instead of jumping, and stopped when the going got weird, and did not hurt myself, and got some good exercise, and Gamma rewarded me with the house pizza and a bottle of Radler (mix of lemonade and beer) and it was real nice hanging out with her.
My body is feeling wiggly right now, but it is nice to feel my body, and to be active again. I really missed it.
She listened politely while I cursed capitalism and the fairy tale of the free market, and while I babbled about Buddhism or rather the quasi-Buddhist quasi-concept of “let all that shit go” which has been on my mind lately, and although I have given up optimism I have also given up pessimism and worrying (theoretically) and this is an interesting vaccuum, for me, although maybe not for other people who are trying to eat their pizza while I talk about it not sure.
Sunday is Father’s Day here in Austria and I plan to go see an action movie with the kids and get something to eat. When Beta was a child we started a tradition of watching B-movies and criticizing them afterwards, listing all the historical, logical etc. errors and omissions (IIRC The Scorpion King with The Rock may have been the first, and I was real mad bc someone spray-painted my brand-new Doblo while we were in the theater), although I have difficulty finding anything to criticize on Abba-Teapot Peabody or whatever her name is although the prosthetic nose on Whatshisname Thorguy will be easy pickings I figure.
That is all.
For now.

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Metamorphosism

Tag Archives: climbing

Migbars, and old man whining about health

doo-dad

Climbing update